Morocco On the World’s Biggest Solar Plant

In February this year, Morocco’s first solar power plant was switched on, launched at the edge of the Sahara desert, about 20 kilometers outside Ouarzazate.

500 megawatts of power

With a power generation capacity of 160 megawatts, Noor 1 should permit Morocco to essentially decrease outflows of greenhouse gasses. Noor 2 and Noor 3 the project’s next stages –– are to follow this year.

According to developers, the project’s full capacity will be, “the largest assembled solar power plant on the planet” and produce 500 megawatts of power, that by 2018 it will give electricity to more than one million Moroccans and decrease the country’s carbon emissions by 760,000 tons for every year.

Morocco started the development of Noor 1 in 2013 at an expense of 660 million dollars and including around 1000 workers. Spread over a range proportional to more than 600 football pitches, the plant’s panels revolve and follow the sun as it moves over the sky.

In November 2011, the World Bank affirmed US$297 million in credits to Morocco to back the Ouarzazate 500MW Concentrated Solar Power Plant Project. The International Bank for Development and Reconstruction allowed a US$200 million credit was given by, and another US$97 million credit coming from Clean Technology Fund (CTF), a US$5.6 billion financing window of the Climate Investment Funds (CIF).

Finally, meaning to supply energy to 1.1 million Moroccans by 2018, the Moroccan Solar Agency (MASEN) Ouarzazate solar complex is among the biggest CSP plants on the planet, as a component of an arrangement to send 2,000MW of solar power generation limit by 2020. Ouarzazate Phase 1 will produce the initial 160MW. It is foreseen that the plant will decrease the nation’s energy reliance by around 2.5 million tons of oil, while additionally bringing down carbon outflows by 760,000 tons for each year.

“CSP is the best energy innovation you have presumably never known about,” says CIF Manager Mafalda Duarte. “The International Energy Agency evaluates that up to 11% of the world’s power generation in 2050 could originate from CSP.”